Policy Management Maturity: Journey to an Agile Policy Management Program
Successful policy management requires the organization to provide an integrated strategy, process, information, and technology architecture to consistently govern policies across the organization. The goal is to give comprehensive, straightforward insight into policy management to identify, analyze, manage, and monitor policies in the context of operations, processes, transactions, and roles. It requires the ability to continuously monitor change and capture changes in the organization’s policies. As a result, organizations are measuring their current state and planning toward a future state of increased policy management maturity in the organization.
Mature policy management is about delivering policy that minimizes the perception of getting in the way of business and becoming a part of business, organization change, and the culture of the organization. There is an element to policies that will always be inhibitive, but the right approach overcomes this by delivering well-defined processes and an engaging policy user experience that aligns with the needs of employees, integrates with organization systems, and delivers relevant policy content when needed wherever it is needed.
This means maturing a connected view of policy management that automates and makes processes more efficient, effective, and agile. This in turn enables organizations to leverage policies to ensure the integrity and culture of the organization aligns with its mission, vision, obligations, and values. Well-defined processes and technology for policy management make it easier to ensure policies are written, maintained, and communicated consistently across the organizations.
Lacking an integrated view of policy management results in business processes, services, processes, employees, and systems that behave like leaves blowing in the wind. An integrated and mature policy management strategy with common processes, information, and technology gets to the root of the problem. Leading organizations adopt a common strategy, framework, architecture, and shared processes to manage policies, increase efficiencies, and be agile to business, risk, and regulatory change. Mature policy management delivers better business outcomes because of stronger policy governance and improved culture and control in the context of the organization and its processes and objective, which will:
- Lower costs, reduce redundancy, and improve efficiencies.
- Deliver consistent and accurate policy in context of the business.
- Improve decision-making and insight into what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
- Enable the organization to defend itself with a robust policy audit trail designed to mitigate risk and ensure integrity of the organization.
Five Stages of Policy Management Maturity
Mature policy management is a seamless part of governance and operations. It requires a top-down view of policies starting with the code of conduct and filtering down into division, department, process, and asset-related policies as well as the risks, regulations, standards, procedures, and controls mapped to those policies. Mature policy management will be consistently led by the executives and the board and become an integrated part of the fabric of business operations and processes – not an unattached obscure layer of scattered documents on file shares and internal websites. It also means bottom-up participation, where business functions understand policies in the context of their roles and responsibilities. GRC 20/20 has developed the Policy Management Maturity Model to articulate maturity in the policy management processes and provide organizations with a roadmap to support acceleration through their maturity journey.
There are five stages to the model:
- Ad Hoc
- Fragmented
- Defined
- Integrated
- Agile
Download the latest GRC 20/20 Research Report on the Policy Management Maturity Model . . .
Register for the webinar on Understanding the Journey to Policy Management Maturity . . .
Register for the next Policy Management by Design Workshop in New York on November 15th . . .
Access the Policy Management Capability Model and become a Certified Policy Management Professional . . .
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